AI Sky replacement - when original sky has clouds

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C S

Is is possible to increase the aggressiveness of the sky replacement.  I find that if my original sky already has clouds L4 has trouble removing them completely regardless of the Horizon Blending, Global Sky and Local Sky settings.  I'm not sure if L4 is deciding these are part of the foreground or just not removing the original clouds completely in the "mask".

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    Stefan Uhlig

    I agree. I have made similar observations. In particular, when there is a mostly blue sky with only some clouds. The filter works better when there are a lot of clouds.

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    Alina Skylum

    Hi,

    We have AI Sky Enhancer which is now located in the AI Enhance Filter. See the screenshot:

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    C S

    Alina, thanks for the suggestion, but we don't want to "enhance" the sky, we want AI Sky Replacement to remove the original sky completely so it doesn't leave some of the original sky present and looking unnatural.

     

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    Alina Skylum

    In this case, you can click Edit Mask in Sky Replacement filter.

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    C S

    I tried the Edit Mask option in the Sky Replacement filter, but it only allows me to paint in/out the already modified sky.  It's not an option to influence the AI algorithm to remove more of the original sky in areas that look wrong/bad.

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    Russ Colban

    Could you mask the original sky then overexpose it so there's nothing left to interfere with the sky replacement?

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    Kate Williams

    @Russ, I'm afraid that if the original sky is overexposed AI will have trouble detecting the sky and carry out the replacement.

    @C S, the first iteration of AI Sky replacement mostly targets dull skies without any clouds. Chances are that if the original sky already looks pretty or is too cloudy some of the clouds will not be replaced / overlapped. This is something our team is aware of and thus our devs will keep teaching algorithms to process such photos in a better way. 

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    Russ Colban

    My experience is different . Here's an original sky overexposed to the point of being invisible, followed by the sky added in Luminar.

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    C S

    @Russ, that does look like a possible workaround, but I still notice that the clouds left in your overexposed sky in the left hand sky/land boundary are still present in the AI replacement.  I tried something to this effect yesterday, but I left a 20 pixel edge on the foreground and filled the rest with the average of the original sky in the hopes that L4 would replace it correctly, but it didn't and actually thought the boundary was part of the foreground.

    I love how L4 can replace around very intricate foregrounds (ie. needles on pine trees, leaves in trees) with better results than manually masking, but it leaves you wanting more when it doesn't replace some existing clouds or introduces a weird glow in the foreground at the sky boundary.  It's not perfect at this point because I have found numerous images where it doesn't detect the sky correctly, but it's better than just about anything I have tried and it does it with minimal effort on the images it does work on.

    I'm hoping some further learning or tweaking of the algorithm will get this closer to working on all images.  Having an option to export the foreground with the sky transparent would be ideal to allow further refinements.

     

     

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    Russ Colban

    That's because I was sloppy rather than a failure of the theory. I spent a little more time on this one. The procedure probably isn't perfect but it could offer a better solution to images where the original sky is showing through:

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    Pat Schleiffer

    I agree with CS. If an original photo has clouds in it, they are not being completely covered by the sky replacement but show through. Very annoying. 

     

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    MARK POLIS, M.D.

    Yes.  It's driving me crazy tonite.  i still get ghosts of darker parts of the original clouds in the replacement.  And if there are branches in the foreground that hang down in the sky area, i can't get it to work at all.  Also, does AI Sky Replacement work on Portrait format images?
    Excuse my naïveté - I'm a drummer.

     

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    Victoria Grace

    Hi Mark,

    You may delete the clouds of the original sky using our Erase tool. Then, the sky replacement will be applied smoother.

    Regarding the portrait format images, it should work just fine as long as a sky is there.

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    MARK POLIS, M.D.

    Thanks, Victoria.  I have a sky which is mostly clouds.  I used the Erase tool and erased every cloud I could and when I hit DONE, the parts I erased were now appearing as a CLONE of the lower foreground!   Frustrating. 

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    Victoria Grace

    Hi Mark,

    Could you please send your image to our techs so that we could have a deeper look into your case?

    Here's how you can send us the file:

    1. Visit https://wetransfer.com/
    2. If it's your first time visiting this website, it might ask you to purchase a subscription. Simply select to proceed with the free version.
    3. Click Add your files.
    4. Select the file(s) on your computer.
    5. After you see all the files you need to send appear in the list, click the icon to the left of the Transfer button (the icon looks like a circle with three dots in it).
    6. In Send As select Link.
    7. Click Transfer.
    8. After the files have finished uploading, click Copy Link and paste it into the email to support@skylum.com

    Also, please, include the URL to this post so that we could refer to it. Thanks in advance!

     

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    Andrew Webb

    Hi. I agree. I find in some images with clouds no combination of settings remove the clouds. In other images I get remnants of the old clouds left superimposed into the new sky and it looks scrappy.

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    Member

    The thread is 2 years old and still no fix for the ghosting in sky replacement. They are busy making the next version to keep the cash flowing. Luminar may in fact be the biggest piece of garbage built on empty promises.

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